Love for a Steel Covered Heart
by pokedawnheart
Summary: Eighteen-year-old May Maplewood had just moved into her Aunt Natalie's house in Littleroot Town seven years after her mother's death when she received a Treecko from Professor Birch after saving him from a disgruntled Poochyena. Now on a Pokémon Journey, May soon encounters Teams Magma and Aqua. Full summary inside. Hoennchampionshipping.
1. Prologue

**Okay, so this is going to be a rather weird story. I rather recently fell in love with Hoennchampionshipping and this story literally just came to me. I am actually working on Chapter Six right now, thought I orginally wasn't planing on uploading it until it was done. I still have quite a ways to go!**

 **Anyway, hope you enjoy the prologue!**

 **Also, here's the full summary:**

 **Eighteen-year-old May Maplewood had just moved into her Aunt Natalie's house in Littleroot Town seven years after her mother's death when she received a Treecko from Professor Birch after saving him from a disgruntled Poochyena. Now on a Pokémon Journey, May soon encounters Teams Magma and Aqua and begins to question what truly happened the night her mother was murdered. All the while, the geologist Hoenn Champion Steven Stone tuggs at her heart and her two rivals/friends, Brandon Birch and Wally Highcutt, try to help her with her growing crush, unaware that she is slowly breaking down the steel barriers around Steven's heart.**

 **What do you think? A few things about the summary will be explained in this prologue, so I won't leave you confused for long!**

 **Here it is!**

* * *

Petalburg City was a surprisingly quiet place in the normal scheme of things. There was a Pokémon Center, a PokéMart, some houses and a Pokémon Gym, where Normal-Type Gym Leader Norman Maplewood lived with his wife Caroline and eleven-year-old daughter May. But that all changed one cold, cloudy night in the middle of winter.

Norman was busy with a late challenger when he heard the commotion from the living area connected to the Gym. He quickly ran to where the noise was coming from, silver-haired challenger behind him, and the sight that met him was horrific. There was a dark-skinned nineteen-year-old standing in the living room, along with another nineteen-year-old with pale skin. His daughter was leaning on the wall in fright, hands covering her face to stop herself from seeing what was happening. And on the floor, continuing to bleed out, was Caroline.

Normal-Types, in gerneral, were seen as somewhat weak Pokémon that could tap into other Type Energies, making them very adaptable. Like other trainers who trained a certain Type of Pokémon, Norman was also rather adaptable to various situations: this one made his blood boil with rage. His precious wife was dead and his only daughter was scared out of her mind.

"What do you think you're doing here?!" Norman roared, startling the two teens. The silver-haired challenger stood behind him in horror before running over to May.

"Why should we answer you?" the dark-skinned boy sneered. "Go Golbat!"

"Numel," the pale skinned boy continued. Out of the thrown pokéballs came a purple bat with a gaping mouth and an orange camel with a green hump and half-lidded, lazy eyes.

"Zangoose, assistance!" Norman cried while tossing his own pokéball, releasing the red and white mongoose with two dark gray claws on its front paws.

"Mawile, I need you!" the silver-haired challenger said while releasing the Steel/Fairy dual Type from its pokéball. "Attract that Numel!" The Deciever Pokémon winked its right dark red eye, making light pink hearts of energy appear and surround the Numel then hit it, making it fall in love with the Steel/Fairy Type. "Its male," he muttered to himself.

"Metal Claw on Golbat," Norman commanded.

"Deflect with Steal Wing!" the dark-skinned teen yelled. Zangoose ran on all fours before jumping up to hit the Bat Pokémon, claws glowing silver with Steel-Type energy. Golbat tensed before its wings also glowed silver and it started smacking away the claws that kept on trying to hit it. Eventually, a Metal Claw managed to hit its target, making the Golbat screech as it was forced to land on its stubby feet, crossing its wings in front of its gaping mouth for balance.

"Good, now use Thunderbolt until it faints," Norman said. While Zangoose shocked the downed bat, the Gym Leader glanced over to the silver-haired fifteen-year-old who was far from idle. His Mawile used the fact that Numel couldn't really attack due to the Attract, and was currently using Vice Grip to squeeze the Fire/Ground dual Type into submission.

Once Golbat and Numel were unconscious, the two older teens ran away barely glancing back. Once they were gone, Norman went over to Caroline's body and held her limp form close to his body, his daughter joining him after a few minutes. The silver-haired teen stood nearby awkwardly before leaving, quietly saying that he would challenge Norman another time.

In the end, the fifteen-year-old re-challenged Norman three weeks later, about five days after Caroline's funeral, winning with the help of his Mawile and Lairon. Afterwards, before leaving Petalburg, the silver-haired teen was stopped by an eleven-year-old brunette, her hair tied into a pair of ponytails.

"Where are you going to go now?" May asked with tears in her sapphire-blue eyes.

"Probably Fortree for my next badge," he replied while releasing his Skarmory. Looking back at the girl, he saw that she was afraid of those teens coming back and hurting her family more than they already had. He thought for second before digging through his backpack. "Aha," he breathed when he felt his hands grab what he was looking for. "Here," he said as he gave her a belt with a sheath, catching the brown gaze of her father who nodded in approval. The teen took this as a sign to continue. "Only use this in an emergency, because you could end up killing someone by accident if you're not careful."

He took out the six-inch knife and gave the eleven-year-old a crash-course on knife care and fighting before he had to go. May ran back to her home, belt already around her small waist, and started telling her father everything the teen had taught her.

As Norman put his daughter to bed that night, a realization struck him hard: they had never asked the teen for his name.

* * *

 **What do you guys think?**

 **Yes, that was a rather burtal way to kill of Caroline, but I need that.**

 **Also, please ignore the cannon that Norman is a new Gym Leader that moved over from Johto, I have it to where he's been the Petalburg Gym Leader for at least five years at the time of the prologue (twelve years in the main story!).**

 **And can anybody guess the identity of the three unnamed teens? I will give you an extra hint: all three are improtant to the story. You don't have to, I just would like to hear what you think.**

 **Anyway, see you next chapter and Happy New Year!**

 **Please review to tell me what you think!**

 **~pokedawnheart; 12/31/17**


	2. Chapter One

**Okay, I'm just going to post this since I feel like it. There were only two reviews for the Prologue, so I will answer them now:**

 **alee the hufflepuff - I'm so glad you enjoyed the prologue, and I hope you enjoy chapter one just as much.**

 **St. Elmo's Fire - 1) As I have already mentioned in one of my other stories (Researcher's Destiny), I use the same grammer that the Pokémon Company uses.**

 **2) I described them that way to give a hint as to who they are, which you will find out later. I didn't want to give to much away.**

 **3) Okay, I admit that that was randomly placed, but that's what random is.**

 **4) Look to number 2 for explaination.**

 **5) Okay, this one got me a little upset when I read it. I put in the summary that May moved in with her Aunt Natalie in the summary and I didn't really like the idea of making an OC to replace Norman. Plus, the death of Caroline was important to the story because it makes things tie together and makes it to where May could understand one of the Pokémon I'm giving her.**

 **Now that I've got that over with, I should mention one more thing: This story takes place during the Omega Ruby storyline.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

May stared at the passing scenery without truly seeing it as her father drove them to Littleroot Town in the van. It's been seven years since the night her mother died and her father had decided that it would be better if she moved in with her Aunt Natalie in Littleroot for a while. It wasn't that May hated her aunt, far from it, but she also knew that her father needed a break as well but was denying himself that.

Things have never been the same after that night. For three months, they hadn't been able to stay in the living room for more than ten minutes at a time (now they could go an hour without flashbacks), mealtimes had become somewhat tense for close to a year, and even now, seven years later, May still suffered from nightmares that would send her fleeing to her father's room for comfort. Their personalities also changed: where May was somewhat chatty, she was now rather shy. Her father became more stotic to challengers with every battle that passed, like he no longer trusted them too much. Not that May blamed him for it.

She even still carried the knife that the challenger had given her before he left. It was the only tangable thing she had to prove that the silver-haired teen had even existed in her life, and that she hadn't dreamed him up at some point because of the trauma that caused her to forget most of what had happened. The earliest she truly remembered of that night was right after her father and the challenger appeared and the challenger comforted her.

It was just a too bad that they never caught his name. All the good he did for them and they were never told his name. Her father had tried to ask the other Gym Leaders, but either they didn't know or they had sworn not to tell. It was rather frusterating to the eighteen-year-old, but it was the way it was and there was nothing she could do about it.

The drive came to an end sooner than May expected, and they were in front of her aunt's house. Her Aunt Natalie was on the porch with her Machamp out of his pokéball, which wasn't that unusual. Once her father cut off the van, the woman and her Pokémon walked over, Machamp grabbing the boxes in the trunk. After a quick greeting and goodbye, her father re-entered the van and drove off. May helped the Machamp move her belogings to her new room before going off to see one of her best friends, Brandon Birch.

After only a few minutes of hanging out though, Brandon shot off, yelling that he had to help his dad, Professor Birch, with some things. May wasn't too disgruntled and decided to go back to her aunt's house to think about things. Before she could reach her aunt's house, however, she heard the sounds of barking and howling mixing with yells of panic. She quickly ran to the scene, even if she didn't have any Pokémon, to help whoever was in trouble.

She stopped when she arrived and took in the odd scene in front of her. Professor Birch must have startled another Pokémon during his field work again because he was being chased by a dark silver wolf pup. She noticed his bag had been dropped at some point and hurriedly selected a pokéball within.

"Please help," May whispered before throwing the pokéball. Out came a pale green gecko with a thick darker tail, pale amber eyes and a red underside.

The battle only lasted three minutes, then May turned her attention back to the Professor. Soon afterwards, the duo went back to the Lab and May got to keep the Treecko she had battled with, since they had already bonded. He also gave her a Pokédex to which she scaned her starter almost instantly.

 **{Treecko, the Wood Gecko Pokémon. Treecko is cool, calm and collected - it never panics under any situation. If a bigger foe were to glare at this Pokémon, it would glare right back without conceding an inch of ground. This Treeco is male and has the ability Overgrow. He knows the moves Pound, Leer, Absorb and Bullet Seed. He also has the egg move Dragon Breath, which has not been unlocked yet.}**

May stared at the Pokédex before bringing her attention back to the Grass-Type and thinking before snapping her fingers, Treecko staring at her with his pale amber eyes the entire time. "What do you think of the name Forest for you?" she asked, unsure if her starter would like that name.

The Treecko stared at her, crossing his arms over his chest and nodded. "Tree," he muttered, which May took to translate as "okay".

"Forest it is," May said with a nod, picking him up and putting him on her shoulder, him gripping her blue bandana. "Do you know where Brandon went?" she asked the professor.

"I think he went to Route 103." Professor Birch had barely gotten the information out his mouth before May ran out his lab. He just shugged and went back to work.

May ran back to her aunt's place and grabbed the backpack that she had packed for just this purpose three months previously. After a hasty goodbye to her rather bewildered aunt, May ran north to Route 101 to challenge her old friend to a battle.

* * *

 **Okay, so I skimmed a lot of it, but it is the way it is. Also, I should mention that Natalie (my OC) is Norman's younger sister. And that May and Brandon are childhood friends, along with Wally, because that's cute.**

 **Ages for those three are as follows:**

 **Brandon: 18 (a few months older than May)**

 **May: 18**

 **Wally: 16**

 **Anyways, please review and you can still guess who those teens in the prologue are (though they aren't teens anymore). If the descritions weren't enough, here are their known Pokémon:**

 **Dark-skinned teen - Golbat**

 **Pale-skinned teen - Numel**

 **Silver-haired teen - Mawile, Lairon**

 **See you guys next chapter!**

 **~pokedawnheart; 1/14/2018**


	3. Chapter Two

**Well, it's been a while with this story. I'm sorry, but I wanted to complete Chapter Six before I post Chapter Two.**

 **Now it's time to answer the reviews for Chapter One!**

 **SilverChampion- I'm glad you like the story!**

 **ArtisticNerd64- I'm very pleased that you like it. Spelling and grammar had always been a somewhat hard point for me, but I hope it gets better as I go! And HoennChampionShipping has become a favorite of mine. But I'm afraid you are somewhat wrong in the assumtion that I mistakeably made: Normal-Types don't really change Type unless they happen to have the right ability to do so. What I meant was that they can acess more kinds of Type Energies, leading to a more varied move-pool. I hope that doesn't dissuade you from reading my story further.**

 **Okay, that's it. Also, one thing I forgot to put at the end of last Chapter:**

 **Pokémon List:**

 **[Nickname-Species{*=shiny}-Gender-Ability (Hidden Ability)-Moveset]**

 **Forest-Treeco-Male-Overgrow- Pound, Leer, Absorb, Bullet Seed and Dragon Breath [Locked]**

 **Just so you know: I will sometimes be skipping dialouge and battles, just giving you an overview as I did in Chapter One. And Pokémon List Changes are on the bottom AN so that I don't give anything away.**

 **Well, if you read my ramble, great! If you haven't, oh well. I still hope you Enjoy Chapter Two!**

* * *

After an overnight stay at the Oldale Pokémon Center, May set off to Route 103. It was a peaceful walk, with May and Forest getting to know each other better in between training. May had the idea to train for a certain move that would help them win against Brandon.

They encountered him next to a circular pond of the deepest blue, muttering to himself. May stared at the veiw of Mt. Chimey for a minute before commenting "Nice veiw you picked for youself." Brandon jumped at the sound of her voice right next to him and May couldn't help but laugh.

"May!" Brandon whined. His Tochic ruffled its orange feathers in startlement.

"I couldn't resist," May said, continuing to laugh. Forest, though he tried to contain it, also ended up laughing at the other pair.

"I see you finally have a Pokémon now. How'd that happen in barely two days?" Brandon asked once he got his embarrasment under control.

"Your dad accidently angered a Poochyena soon after you left and I picked the pokéball that contained this Treecko. Afterwards, he let me keep him since we have already bonded. His name is Forest," May explained. "But enough about that," she continued, "we're challenging you to a battle!"

Brandon looked surprised but not surprised to hear her challenge him. "Alright," he sighed and nodded at the Torchic at his side.

"Let's do this Forest," May whispered to her partner who nodded in return and flipped off her head, landing perfectly in the make-shift battle field. May took out her Pokédex to scan her friend's starter.

 **{Torchic, the Chick Pokémon. Torchic sticks with its trainer, following behind with unsteady steps. This Pokémon breathes fire of over 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, including fireballs that leave the foe scorched black.}**

"Lady's first," Brandon mockingly bowed.

"You're going to end up regretting that," May replied. "Forest, Leer then Pound." Forest's normally pale amber eyes glowed an erie red, lowering Torchic's defense before rushing forward, slaming the Chick Pokémon with his tail, knocking it over.

"Retaliate with Peck!" Brandon called out. Torchic ran over to Forest, its beak glowing white with energy.

"Bullet Seed, don't let them get close," May calmly stated. She couldn't help but think that Forest's calm nature had rubbed off on her already. Forest let loose green seeds from his slightly open mouth rapidly, almost like a machine gun shooting out bullets. Torchic stopped its advancement when the seeds started hitting it.

"Repay the favor with Ember." Torchic, after regaining its bearings, fired small fireballs from its beak, coutering and overpowering the seeds.

"Absorb," May said with a jerk of her head. Forest glowed green while avoiding the fireballs, trendels of the same energy reaching for Torchic, sapping its health while healing himself of what damage he had gained from the battle and regaining energy.

"Fury Attack!" Brandon yelled out of despreation. May and Forest smirked as Torchic ran over to Forest, intending to attack him with multiple pecks of its small beak. May nodded to Forest who nodded back before facing the incoming chick, his eyes briefly flashing green before returning to their normal color so fast it looked like a trick of light. Not a moment later, Torchic tripped as two blades of grass tied together and caught the Fire-Type's foot. Another round of Bullet Seed saw Torchic out cold.

"Good job Forest," May said as he climbed back onto her shoulder.

"You did great Torchic, today justn't our lucky day," Brandon muttered as he used a Revive on his partner. "That was a great a battle, May," he continued.

"Thanks Brandon," May replied.

"We'd better get back to Littleroot, though. I'm sure your aunt's worried." That got a groan of protest from May, but she knew it to be true.

The two trainers walked back to the small town, talking about everything and nothing at the same time. It was its own kind of peaceful, at least until Brandon mentioned her knife, wondering once more who had given it to her. She snapped at him that the challenger never gave his name to _any_ of the Gym Leaders and as far as she knew, he could have moved on to a different region. He dropped the topic instantly after that.

Their re-arrival in Littleroot went unnoticed and the two split up to go back to their houses. When May entered her aunt's house, Natalie wrapped her in a tight hug. Forest jumped down from her shoulder and watched from the table.

"Aunt Natalie!" May yelped in surprise.

"Where were you?" her aunt demanded.

"I just went to challenge Brandon to a battle now that I have Forest," May muttered in frustration.

It took some time before May was able to calm her aunt and go up her room, Forest following behind. She took out her knife from its sheath and cleaned it with a peice of spare cloth until the metal gleam then started practicing fighting techniques with it, ending with throwing it the way she had praticed for seven years, aiming for the target she had already set up. With practiced ease, it landed blade first in the bull's eye circle. May sighed and tugged her knife from the target and sharpened it to its sharpest before cleaning it once again then putting it back in its sheath.

A little while later, May went back over to Professor Birch's Lab where she received permisson to go on a journey from the lively professor (he had appearently talked to her dad about what had happened and he said for her to go ahead) along with ten empty pokéballs. May cheered and ran back to her aunt's house to pack for this, somewhat unexpected, chance of a lifetime.

An hour later, she was ready. Her hair was tied back with a blue and white bandanna and she was wearing her usual outfit, her blue sneakers were over a pair of mid-calf light blue socks. She packed her backpack with spare clothes, a tent and sleeping bag, a piece of flint, some books and her TM case. Looking around her room one last time, she caught sight her blue slingshot from when she and Brandon were ten and they'd play war games with the other kids in Petalburg. She thought for a minute before grabbing it, tucking it into her belt beside her knife on her left side. Satisfied with her appearance, the brunet ran out of her aunt's house, determined to not come back until she defeated the Hoenn League Elite Four and Champion.

* * *

 **So, what do you think? Also, is anyone going to guess the identity of the three unnamed teens from the Prologue? Not that it's some great mystery, I just want to know if you get what's happening here.**

 **And how did you guys like the battle? It was short, but it's the best I can give you.**

 **Pokémon List Update:**

 **Forest: Grass Knot (new move)**

 **OK, I think that's everything. See you next Chapter (which won't be out until I finish Chapter Seven)!**

 **~pokedawnheart**

 **2/12/2018**


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